


Moments

by thedevilchicken



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-26
Updated: 2011-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-05 09:42:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4175091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All they've ever had is stolen moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moments

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 26 May 2011 for the 2011 Small Fandom Fest. 
> 
> Show setting after Jaime's capture and before he returns to King's Landing; bear in mind this uses some book elements!

When they were young, Jaime loved Tyrion best of all. He was his little brother so of course he did - even though everyone told him baby Tyrion was a dwarf and an imp and a right little monster and that meant he could never do the things the other boys would do, Jaime still loved him. There were eight years between them but that hardly seemed to matter; Jaime "borrowed" his brother when the nurses weren't watching close enough, took him riding in the woods, led him down into the city to watch his father's men with their swords and bows, let him cheer for his big brother when the master-at-arms gave him his first blunted morningstar to practice with. They played at battles with the wooden knights in Father's study; Jaime let him win but he could see just how clever Tyrion was going to be when he grew older. Perhaps he had to be because he couldn't sit a horse without someone there to help him up. 

Cersei was different. People said they were twins and they usually looked like it, apart from the clothes. They had the same blonde hair and emerald eyes and the smile that made them look like they were two halves of the same person more than two people apart. They'd compared themselves sometimes when they were younger, before Tyrion came and mother died. They found their skin and their hair and their eyes and their lips looked the same, that their hands fit together so snugly, that they had the same birthmark by their hip, though Jaime had his on the left and Cersei on the right. Maybe some of the parts didn't quite match but that had always just made things all the more intriguing for them - the maester wouldn't tell him and Cersei's septa scolded her when she asked, so they had to find out for themselves just what it all meant. Mother told them not to do it anymore when the servant found them and Jaime had to move into another room, right over on the other side of the castle. No one told them what they were doing wrong, just that it must never happen again. All Jaime knew was that he missed his sister. Playing at war with baby Tyrion had to do instead, so he learned to love it.

They looked the same but Cersei was a girl, so she had to sew with the other girls and learn songs and dancing from their miserable old septa while Jaime swung wooden swords in the yard. He always beat the other boys, every time. He wondered sometimes if Cersei was better than the other girls at whatever they were doing and he bet she was. She was a Lannister, after all, like him. Father said they were the best house in all the Seven Kingdoms, told them whenever they saw him, and Father didn't lie. He was the Hand of the King then. Jaime always knew that was important and not just because the maester told him so. Their father was a very important man, so important that other men came to bend the knee. He made sure Tyrion knew that because everyone did and no one seemed to want to talk to Tyrion. Jaime wanted everyone to treat him the way they'd treat father, too. It was a boy's wish, and the vow he made himself in his youth there on Casterly Rock. 

The maester made him learn other things, too - boring things he'd never need to know about numbers and letters and different peoples like the Dothraki and Pentoshi and bands of Myrish pirates that weren't so bad when he heard the stories and didn't have to put their names on a map. He liked the idea of the horse lords, riding in their khalasars over there across the Narrow Sea, feared and plundering wherever they cared to. They fought many battles and Jaime knew that he would, too. Still, he liked the idea of armour and swords more than wearing bells in his hair and eating horsemeat instead of pork and beef and the rich venison stew their cook made. Father said when he was a man grown he'd have the best armour there'd ever been in all the Seven Kingdoms. Cersei said he should shine like the sun. Jaime liked how that sounded and thought of himself all in gold; maybe girls weren't so bad after all. They shared their secret smile and he remembered why he'd always loved her.

On their tenth name day, Cersei gave him a necklace that she'd made for him. It was just a long length of thin leather cord but there was something hanging from it that she told him was a lion's tooth. It was big and smooth and when he put it on Cersei smiled so he didn't ask her where she'd got it from; they looked alike when they smiled and Cersei seemed to like that more than anything. She'd sneak into his room at night and they'd talk for hours or he'd snatch two wooden swords from the master-at-arms and he'd teach her how to fight because no one else would. She dressed in his clothes so she wouldn't trip on her skirts and sometimes they'd sneak out of his window, shimmy up the gutters and lay on the roof looking up at the stars. It was like no one in the world existed but the two of them. Tyrion wasn't old enough to join them, Cersei said, and anyway he'd never be like them. They were twins. They were special and little misshapen Tyrion was so very, very different. Besides, everyone knew Tyrion's coming had killed Mother, that was why Father never smiled anymore. 

They were just past their eleventh name day when Father started to talk about marriage. Jaime thought at first they'd have a new mother but Cersei told him at night beneath the stars just what those snatches of overheard conversation really meant; Father meant to marry her to Prince Rhaegar the king's son and she'd have to leave Casterly Rock forever. Jaime would stay there with the maester and learn to be the Warden of the West like Father was and Cersei would have to go away, to live in King's Landing with the king and all his men. She'd have to birth the prince's children and she'd never be allowed to watch the stars with her brother again, because she was a lady and that was what ladies did. Jaime hated that. He didn't want her to go. Little Tyrion was forgotten; he raged at his father so he wouldn't make Cersei leave. He cried and he broke things and Father said he'd shamed himself but Cersei didn't go away. He thought he'd won; he didn't find out for years to come that she stayed just because the Mad King had told Tywin in no uncertain terms that he would never wed his son and heir to a Lannister. 

Cersei told him one night that the Targaryen kings always married their sisters. Maybe that was why Aerys wouldn't let his son marry her, she'd thought - Cersei was a Lannister and not a Targaryen, a lion and not a dragon. She thought their silver hair and purple eyes were odd and ugly, and Jaime agreed because blonde was so much better. Maybe when they were older they could be married like the Targaryens were, Jaime said. Cersei told him they couldn't; her septa had said so and told her never to say that again, it was incest and incest was wrong, the gods hated it, everyone knew that. Jaime didn't understand and Cersei admitted that she didn't either because if the Targaryens could do it, why couldn't they? The Targaryen kings would marry their sisters to carry on their pureblood line with ugly white-haired children they called dragons like the skulls they said were in the throne room; Jaime and Cersei would have such perfect Lannister boys with blonde hair and their beautiful green eyes and they'd be Wardens of the West when Father died, but that was wrong somehow and they'd never be allowed it. It didn't make any sense at all. It was what the maester would call a double standard, Jaime thought, because as much as he liked fighting he did sometimes pay attention. As Jaime was getting older, it seemed like more and more things in the world had double standards and the kings always got the better part of them. 

They sent him to foster at Crakehall when he was eleven. Father told him it was for the best but he never thought so; Cersei locked herself in her room and wouldn't even say goodbye to him, Tyrion latched his little arms around Jaime's leg and wouldn't let go of his big brother. But he'd had to leave, to go be a squire for a knight he only knew from the maester's lessons. He didn't like Sumner Crakehall even a little, he hated the tasks he was set, he missed his home and his brother and even his maester sometimes, and he missed his sister most of all. He loved her. She was part of him. It was cruel for them to be parted, not even permitted to visit, not even a raven to say he was thinking of her. He knew he'd be punished if anyone found out about them. The gods said it was wrong, everyone said so, and sometimes he almost wished that he could understand why that was. 

There could have been other girls. The other boys had them sometimes, even the ugly boys did, and they told crude stories about it after they'd done, how they'd had the tavern girls while they were out hunting with their lord or bent the blacksmith's daughter over in the hayloft. There was a lot of talk of the begetting of bastards, how there in the Westerlands they were always called Hill but under Tully standards they were Rivers and then Sand down in Dorne. Jaime didn't want bastards, the way the maesters told them they shouldn't, but it wasn't about honour because what was honour worth to him? He wanted Cersei and their children would be lions just like they were, but Father meant her to be a queen. He'd have to marry some other girl of noble birth instead, maybe a cousin like Father had with Mother. Maybe his children could be nearly as handsome as their purebloods could have been but he could never love his wife, he knew that. He could never love any woman but Cersei. 

She told him to join the Kingsguard. He hated the idea, he wanted Casterly Rock and the life he'd been promised since childhood, he wanted to be the lord in the Westerlands like his father and his father's father. He'd be Warden of the West when his father died and even if he couldn't have Cersei he'd marry her to some lord or other close to home, he'd visit her and have her visit him and they'd barely ever be apart. But she said that Father meant to marry him to Lysa Tully and Cersei was meant to be a queen, be it by one way or another. She'd be far from him forever and how could he live with that? He could be a knight of the Kingsguard and be close to her always, as he'd always said he wanted. Tyrion could have Casterly Rock - didn't he love his brother? Didn't he love _her_?

It was just one night because that was all the time they had, in an inn in King's Landing where the beds were lumpy and made him wish for the Westerlands. They made love all night, the way he knows he's now too old for, her skin paler than his because he'd been made a knight while they'd been parted and he could barely stand to stay indoors because that meant he had to sheath his sword. But they were still so similar it made his head swim with possibility. She was beautiful and she was just like him, and maybe thinking it was a kind of impious vanity the maesters warned against. He loved her so did that mean he loved himself? She kissed him sweetly as she let the simple rough wool dress she'd come disguised in slip down from her shoulders to the floor. She was a woman now, their differences so much more apparent as his gaze moved over her there in the candlelight. He cupped her breasts in his hands. He would never be able to deny her anything again, he knew that in the moment he first took her. He'd take the white and give up everything he was heir to, all for her, because she wanted it. He was lost in love. 

The moment came and went, as did Cersei. Their father was furious, took her away and Jaime, a new Knight of the Kingsguard, found himself desolate in the empty halls of the Red Keep of King Aerys Targaryen. He missed his sister and he despised his king, resented his duty and wished the time turned back as he listened to the whispers all around him. They'd all die in a great swirl of wildfire before Aerys would give the city to Robert Baratheon. Panic rose as he thought of that bright green flame, of how it would sink into his flesh and keep him from Cersei - would his bones look like hers when nothing else was left? He remembers telling himself he couldn't die without her. He'd never felt so free as in the moment that he opened the Mad King's throat. 

Moments came and went. Cersei came to the city, sold by their father to Robert Baratheon, a queen at last as Tywin had always meant for her to be. She had never looked lovelier than on her wedding day, Jaime thought, so fair and sad and proud as she gave herself to the new King Robert. He was strong, the perfect picture of the warrior in his polished, dented armour, big warhammer in his big hands. Jaime could have killed him, he knows that now as he knew it then. He'd killed one king, and he could kill another rather than let his sister go willingly into this usurper's bed. But she did, because that was her duty as Robert's wife and queen, because it was what she was raised for. Jaime wonders if she ever wished she'd been born male like he was. 

He drank himself to sleep that night, or at least to sour unconsciousness. He had never wanted any other woman but for Cersei, had never had another woman and would never again, will never. Cersei would have another man's sons and he would guard them while Tyrion took Casterly Rock. In that moment, she took everything from him. He could not have loved her more. 

Moments came and went. They spoke in hushed whispers in dark and empty hallways, kept conversations short because who knew where the spies might linger? The Red Keep has eyes and none could ever know their secret - it would mean their lives, they knew, somehow a treason worse than slaying a king. But there were moments, kisses when he could no longer bear to see her and not touch, an hour or so with each four months or five or more and that was almost too much danger even then. Jaime didn't care. He would have opened Robert's great belly with the steel of his sword without a moment's hesitation if Cersei had just said the word to him. He couldn't bear to see how the man treated her. She deserved so much more than Robert's frequent infidelities, than the bastards and the wenches and the wine. She deserved _him_. 

Sometimes he wonders if they should not have died together before all of this began. Cersei has schemed all these years, to keep him close, to put their children on the Iron Throne, but she's not nearly so clever as she believes herself to be. Jaime sees that now, finds he wishes she'd put down the wineglass, wishes she had half of Tyrion's political finesse because the halfman brother she despises would have known better than to put their Joffrey unchecked upon the throne. She's going to get them killed one day, and if they're going to die he'd prefer it be on their own terms. He's seen the effects of Varys' potions. He's seen Ser Ilyn and his greatsword part noble heads from shoulders. He wants to die fighting. He wants to die with Cersei in his arms. 

He's rotting away day by day there in the bowels of Hoster Tully's dungeons. Riverrun is not the place he wants to die but he wonders if he'll ever even see the sun again, breathe air that isn't foul with filth and stagnant water that seeps through the cracks of the damp cell walls. He can barely move for the chains that bind him hand and foot, feels his muscles wasting and the itch of lice in his filthy blonde hair and he wonders what Cersei would make of him now, if she'd hold him, if she'd kiss his lips or recoil from the wretched thing he's starting to become. He's her slave, but she was never his. He'll die for her one of these days, or because of her. 

When they were young, Jaime loved Tyrion best. They were brothers and Tyrion needed him because no one else would love him, not the way he looked, not when their lady mother died for him to live. He still loves his brother but Cersei's love has torn strip by strip by strip from him, flayed him raw until all that he can see is her. All he wants is one more stolen moment, the ecstasy of the bodies they share, a kiss; he could die without objection if that moment were his last. 

In those dungeons dark as death, he dreams of her. 

"Cersei, I love you," he tells her, bare and on his knees. "Cersei, I'm yours."

She loves him too, he knows that, but for her it's not enough to love. She smiles a bitter smile and turns away. 

"Cersei, please."

He's dying. He's desperate. And in his dreams all she can do is laugh.


End file.
